Mountains, meditations, service, and forgiveness pro and con

WHY?

RantWoman WHY are you posting these links TOGETHER?

1. They are true to many themes on RantWoman's mind.

2. There is a difference between digesting ideas with good oral or written conversation and fitting one's Light into the preferred 30-second messages of some Friends around RantWoman.

3. Pope Francis is in Iraq promoting interfaith dialogue. RantWoman generally considers interfaith dialogue a good thing, no matter how many other questions might be swirling around a person or an institution.

Read on for more.

And WHY do you insist on tagging the post #Women's History Month???

The short answer: there are some inspiring female figures here. There is an article that calls itself feminist and that reminds RantWoman why feminism needs to be a big tent. Also not every moment of women's history is glorious and inspiring and part of women's history is what women deal with on an ongoing basis.

Flashback? How far back?

Flashback Friday 100th Anniversary of Mt Rainier and Featuring Floyd Schmoe

Floyd Schmoe was a founder of UFM. At the time of this interview he was older than Mt. Rainier National Park. He died in 2001 at the age of 105.

It would be catty to post the details of what this story has to do with #WomensHistoryMonth

Old Stranger item about Seattle's Best Christians

WARNING: there is cringe-worthy  mention of a now-disgraced politician. RantWoman has no basis for any opinion about what anyone should write now about this individual and faith.

Aside from the admirable struggles and service chronicled here, RantWoman did her customary count names and measure space exercises.  The Stranger article mentions 3 men and 2 women. Each man gets considerably more space than either woman. 

In case anyone has missed a generational theme, 

Radical Discipleship Dreaming a World to Come

A letter to young activists

RantWoman thinks some of the language here might have spoken to Friend Floyd.

Feminist Killjoys on apologies

Apologies for Harm Apologies as Harm

Happy Reading. Thoughts? Comments? Questions?

Apropos of Homelessness

RantWoman awhile ago heeded a call to deliver, unsolicited, some questions to a younger Friend by email. RantWoman assured the young Friend that she was heeding a call to deliver but did not have any specific expectations of results. RantWoman has been gratified to see seeds sprouting over time from that exchange.

Resources anyone?

With that in mind, RantWoman is heeding an inner call to deliver some contributions to discussion about homelessness.

 

Bill Radtke The Record several segments about homeless issues

One of RantWoman's consistent go-to journalistic sources about homelessness issues is Erica C Barnett.

Here is an article from May 2020 that covers many homelessness related issues.

May 2020 article on REACH programs

Also presently, find Erica at Publicola.com and on Twitter at @EricaCBarnet

Does anyone besides RantWoman care about bus benches and grafitti?

Grafitti and a bus bench

The Light Rail is Coming.

    And finally, lest anyone forget that a new Light Rail Station is opening near UFM in SEPTEMBER 2021 (Are we ready?)a slightly edited version of an email RantWoman fed into the work of Quaker Voice:

This item overlaps with economic justice and criminal justice. I am passing it along in case anyone has time / capacity to monitor. and decide whether any alerts would be helpful.

Via Twitter from Rep. Fitzgibbons   

House voted 96 to 1 to pass my bill HB 1301, allowing @SoundTransit to develop a non-judicial system to resolve fare evasion citations. When @kcmetrobus did this, they got a system that's more effective, sees less fare evasion, and resolves more citations than before. #waleg

RantWoman:

For background at some point King County Metro or someone in the county audited all the citations issued for fare evasion on Metro buses. Probably to no one's surprise, the vast majority of the

citations were issued to people living unhoused; and a very low percentage of the fines were ever collected. So Metro switched to a program of the formmerly fare enforcement staff emphasizing paths to help rather than fines of something like $194.

To me it's a no-brainer that the Senate should allow SoundTransit to do as Metro has done. I have no read on whether there might be howls of protests from the suburban afraid of light rail anyway crowd particularly places north and east of Seattle set to get new stations and service in the next few years.

FWIW also, perception of safety is one key driver of whether people who have the choice about travel method are willing to get out of their cars and on to transit.

Questions to consider

What does it mean to be a good neighbor either in UFM standards or for others?

Where might be some points of conflict besides p-p-p-arking?

What is within our Light and capacity to do?

 
Invitation!

Okay RantWoman, what to you would indicate that people have interacted with many topics raised here?

THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ASKING!

Leave a comment. Post questions for discussion.

Will word reach RantWoman of what themes might emerge from discussion?

"How The British Took Over India" - TREVOR NOAH (from "Afraid Of The Dar...

RantWoman is delighted by two things in this video

--the theological worlds in collision

--the sounds of laughter indicating that there was a live audience.

This video is a much younger Trevor Noah. RantWoman needs laughter and acknowledgment of worlds in collision.

Marianne Kaba prison abolitionist

 

The inspiration for today's #WomensHistoryMonth moment

"I very carefully and deliberately choose how I'm going to show up in the world. I always want to make sure I'm always opening the door for other people" 

Marianne Kaba Wants Us to Imagine a World Without Prisons

Saturday Night in Pandemia with The Justice League, daffodils, riots, tear gas, cockroaches and organic food.

Live from... it's SATURDAY NIGHT (technically already Sunday morning but who's counting?) RantWoman is not under the influence of any substances wackier than ice water and slightly glarfy overly saltybut low fat snacks from the (not very accessible but manageable for RantWoman) vending machine in the lobby of RantWoman's building.

RantWoman reminds her readers of her blog as Quaker journal model of blogging. There are several topics not ripe for blogging. RantWoman may or may not get them actually blogged and therefore may or may not at some future date remember what she was talking about. RantWoman encourages readers to do the best you can to find nuggets meaningful to you.

In honor of day 366+1 since RantMom's debate watching buddy died of COVID in her retirement community, RantWoman could be penning meditations about a year of COVID inconveniently. Stay tuned.

In sync with signs of spring and messages in moer than one worship space, RantWoman could be penning meditations about daffodils, cigarette butts or possibly other more biodegradeable material impeding the enjoyment of daffodils, or about releasing oneself from hopes for a better past in conjunction with the word compost, metaphorically for the moment transformation of something smelly and not wanted into fertilizer in the cycles of life.

In honor of a story time and a picture book and seeing or not seeing, crying or not crying RantWoman could let her keyboard clatter over more than one strand of children and "oh, OWWW," oww's it would definitely be preferable to avoid in the future and other owws that no one is going to be able to avoid completely.

In honor of a moment from the book My Grandmother's hands, RantWoman could write about colorism, a grandmother, and the difference between clean pain and dirty pain, the reality of trying not to pass along negativity while equipping ...by fostering resilience.

RantWoman is going to do none of those things. Instead RantWoman is going to permit her inner snark monster to run wild in connection with various #CapitalRiots themes. Where to start?

Did antifa organize the #CapitolRiots, even indirectly? RantWoman is terribly glad that despite some efforts to seed media streams with this lie, many of the #CapitolRiot suspects are proudly standing up and taking responsibility for their work and saying in various terms "How DARE You assign credit for our (cough) brilliant achievements to antifa?

Besides, if antifa had organized events on January 6, there most likely would have been plenty of masks, clouds of weed smoke, bottles of water, street medics, maybe some inspiring drumming, food stands selling edibles and vegan treats, and flocks of helpers with biodegradeable trash bags moving among the crowd collecting waste.

Or would there be? Permit RantWoman to do a little compare and contrast exercise: over the summer, the thankfully former president called in the national guard and dumped tear gas all over peaceful protestors in Lafayette Park, across the street from the White house so that he could look manly and in charge and hold up a Bible in front of a church. On the other hand when insurrectionists violently breach several layers of barriers and swarm the Capitol building, it took over THREE HOURS from the time a request to call out the national guard to when orders were given to deploy. The reason cited for the delay: optics after public outrage over the summer. Come on! Do not try to fly that hard into RantWoman's BS detector. Just don't.

Here RantWoman digresses to a recent Adult Religious Education session where a Friend told amazing stories nonviolent Quaker witness and humanitarian service. This Friend spoke of always trying to do her actions in a spirit of worship. For example, one Vietnam war protest across from the White house involved 300 silent Quakers. President Richard (very lapsed Quaker) Nixon ordered the protestors arrested. One protestor even wrote the judge about how the Quaker testimony on equality meant that mean of those arrested would not stand for the judge in court. The judge accepted this and a campaign organized by AFSC got everyone released in short order.

But Back to the 21st Century. 

Sen. hawly about investigating techniques involvig various cellphohne and cellphone network parameters. Dude read your user agreements. RantWoman is pretty sure ... 

Likewise surveillance technology and facial recognition software. Convenient that the city can't use. Would they except donations from private citizens, freelance volunteers...

White people go to jail?

After all the investigating gets done, how many prison abolitionists are just going to want to Send the Defendants to Jail For a Long Time? 

And if too many white people get sent to jail and start caterwauling about jail amenities such as cockroaches and non-organic food, will there be a groundswell of voices clamoring to upgrade conditions for everyone?

Never mind that. How many of the rioters will have access  to Alternatives to Violence programs and how will AVP facilitators be able to adapt their curriculum...?

History in White and otherwise

Process? Content? / Tools? Content? / Access? Shareability? Think of the above as some kind of outline or several lenses for finding paths through what RantWoman is going to write.

Tagging this post #WomensHistoryMonth for one thing because the podcast below features the work of NW journalist Leah Sottile, clearly an able journalist and historical recordkeeper.

Even though RantWoman needs to noodle around about what "reading" means for her and how she does or does not absorb information, RantWoman is dead serious about the value of the two items here.

Two resources have come RantWoman's way related to racism in the NW and the white supremacist movement, a phenomenon RantWoman specifically means to distinguish from the general societal soup of white supremacy we all swim in 

--An episode of what seems like a very cool podcast

Militias, White Supremacy, and the US capitol Insurrection

--Blunt assessments of many contemporary realities 

--History most of which RantWoman has lved through but stunning when laid out event to event.

George Bush; the one who launched a Puget Sound Settlement

Tools ?  / Content?

Does RantWoman have the necessary device and connectivity--and additional adeptness with accessibility tools to be able to consume the content?

Is the content available in pathways that operate in RantWoman's tools / connectivity / skills environment?

True confession: RantWoman does not really know how to deal with podcasts. Also RantWoman kind of thinks it would be cool to keep her hand-me-down iPad as a media device for ebooks, podcasts, and of course email and the raw internet. So far RantWoman is barely fluent enough in iOS and Voiceover to get close to this aspiration. RantWoman probably needs to find a person geeky in the right flavors of technology and just hang out with them. But in the meantime, check out the above items.

Judi Dench discusses working while losing her sight

 #WomensHistoryMonth

Judi Dench discusses working while losing her sight: 'I've had to find another way'

One thing she's not doing is hiding out; Dench says she'll continue working.

Feb. 26, 2021, 3:25 PM EST / Source: TODAY

By Randee Dawn

Dame Judi Dench has been a presence on TV and film screens for 60 years, and at 86, she's not planning to stop acting anytime soon.

That enough would be inspiring, but Dench is currently battling an issue that makes it positively extraordinary: She's losing her vision.

Currently suffering from age-related macular degeneration, which affects nearly 11 million people in the United States, Dench recently told The Guardian that while she may have to adjust her life and work styles, she's not going to retire.

"You find a way of just getting about and getting over the things that you find very difficult," she said. "I've had to find another way of learning lines and things, which is having great friends of mine repeat them to me over and over and over again. So I have to learn through repetition, and I just hope that people won't notice too much if all the lines are completely hopeless!"

The petite, white-haired, no-nonsense actor is familiar to American audiences from her turns in films like "Shakespeare in Love" (for which she won her Oscar); "Mrs. Brown," "Victoria & Abdul," "Skyfall" (and several other modern James Bond films) and "Philomena," among others.

She's also delighted us in recent years by getting a tattoo at 81 and being the oldest person on the cover of British Vogue at 85.

The loss of her sight, Dench explained, appears to be genetic: Her mother also had some sight loss; her daughter, Finty, "goes and has her eyes checked" regularly. 

Still, she noted what she considers an upside: "It does enable you to do one thing and that is that you have to get very close to people before you can recognize who they are. During lockdown I made a film and I was up close addressing people wearing masks during rehearsals, nothing to do with any scene I'm in. It's kind of exquisite if you can do that and that's the good side of it, and you have to look at that side of it."

And you have to admire that Dench can even laugh a bit at the way her body is changing.

"I was doing 'The Winter’s Tale' with Ken Branagh a couple of years ago, playing Paulina, and after we had been running for three weeks or so at the Garrick (Theater) he said to me — I have a long speech at the end — he said: 'Judi, if you were to say that speech about eight feet to your right, you'd be saying it to me and not to the (proscenium) arch," she said.

Then she laughed: "I rely on people to tell me!"

https://www.today.com/today/amp/tdna210187

Judi Dench Wikipedia article

Did readers know, without using the search bar on this blog, that Dame Judi is a QUAKER?

RantWoman could just leave this moment of admiration for Dame Judi here and leave things at that. But since when has RantWoman been known to quit just because everyone else thinks she should. Instead RantWoman needs to riff, yes again, on a number of topics.

Long ago in a previous Meeting effort to talk about disability, RantWoman made a list of 13 people in Meeting dealing, some more openly than others with vision lost. Three were women in their 90's all suffering from Age Related Macular Degeneration. They have all since passed on. And yet, blindness...? Meeting Conversation...?

RantWoman wishes Friends to consider a number of terms, some of which have gotten repeatedly edited out of Meeting conversation by well-meaing ableds who think they knoew better than RantWoman does about what needs to be said.

--Vocational Rehabilitation, ie what changes and accommodations are needed so a person can continue to work or to do new work?

--Spiritual accompaniment or walking alongside: if there are things that no one can fix, now what? 

--Inspiration porn. Okay, okay, RantWoman has not been trying to use the term "inspiration porn" but uh, one form of ableism, when say a journalist, eve n a very well-meaning one about "oh, wow, someone can do something I think is impossible..."

RantWoman will now return to admiring Dame Judi for all the reasons there are to admire Dame Judi and try to dial her own inner blowtorch to somewhere below "singe" about matters of blindness closer at hand.